Mission statement:

Armed and Safe is a gun rights advocacy blog, with the mission of debunking the "logic" of the enemies of the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

I can be reached at 45superman@gmail.com.You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/45superman.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

The McCarthy/NRA Gun Control Act

After all the warning signs, I don't suppose this is a surprise to many, but the NRA's support for H.R. 297, the NICS "Improvement" Act, is certainly not a welcome development to those committed to the fight for gun rights, and who are not impressed with the Neville Chamberlain approach.

Senior Democrats have reached agreement with the National Rifle Association on what could be the first federal gun-control legislation since 1994, a measure to significantly strengthen the national system that checks the backgrounds of gun buyers.
The NRA is apparently congratulating itself over "significant concessions" in the bill.
To sign on to the deal, the powerful gun lobby won significant concessions from Democratic negotiators in weeks of painstaking talks. Individuals with minor infractions in their pasts could petition their states to have their names removed from the federal database, and about 83,000 military veterans, put into the system by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2000 for alleged mental health reasons, would have a chance to clean their records. The federal government would be permanently barred from charging gun buyers or sellers a fee for their background checks. In addition, faulty records such as duplicative names or expunged convictions would have to be scrubbed from the database.
So, the "significant concessions" include a provision whereby someone with a minor brush with the law decades in his past can ask to be removed from the state mandated defenselessness list (with, apparently, no obligation on the state's part to honor the request). Gee, that's some concession. Likewise, more than 80,000 veterans who are in the database, supposedly for reasons of mental health, would "have a chance" to own a firearm to defend themselves, after having carried one to defend us all. How generous of us. Oh, and if the list includes names that shouldn't be there, they have to be removed. That's a "consession"? Or does the "concession" lie in the fact that we don't have to pay for this new government scrutiny into our lives (but of course we do, as taxpayers--a quarter of a billion a year, apparently)?

The article did teach me something I hadn't known about my new favorite state:
Only one state, Vermont, does not participate in the instant-check system, and even with the threatened aid cuts, negotiators expressed confidence that no other state would drop out, given the funding that would be available and the stigma that would be attached to withdrawal.
Wow, no government permission slip required to carry a firearm, and no participation in the NICS program--Vermont must be a raging maelstrom of "gun violence" (according to this, two states have lower violent crime rates).

As I've said before, the only thing this bill would "improve" about NICS is the government's ability to more closely approach Orwell's nightmare. NICS doesn't need to be "improved"--it needs to be abolished. As it happens, a vastly better alternative has been thought of.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a touchy subject.But I do feel that if someone,with documented behavioral issues such as the VT shooter,is court ordered to a nuthatch,as he was,that well maybe that should be put into NCIS.I used to be a correctional officer and I dealt with more then my fair share of psycho types that had be court committed time and time again.The VA records for ordered to NCIS by Komrade Klinton and that is wrong.I served in Iraq as a medic.Lots of us coming back from there have some issues but it dont mean we are going to go "crazy" and hurt anyone.That really is unfair.I am very anti-gun control but I do agree that somethings need to be done to keep guns out of the hands of people like Long Duck Dong or whatever the VT shooters name was.Granted the "gun-free"zone at VT played a major roll in how this guy was able to do it.

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

I see your point, but my position is that anyone judged so dangerously mentally ill as to require being barred from buying firearms should not be running free in society, because he is presumably also too dangerous to be trusted not to steal a gun, or to buy one on the black market, or two wreak his carnage by some means other than a firearm.

me said...

and just wait until evil H has her socialized medical care plan. EVERYONE will know everything.

Just a way to disarm vets and anyone "questionable" and arm the criminals.

typical divisive tactics to call for even more government. the end result of it all...

again?

opaww said...

I also served in the first gulf war and have some issues but there of a non-violant nature and do not feel it should be an issue with anyone